Deepling

Among the strange things that live at the bottom of the ocean there drifted a little lost starling. She didn't understand that she should be unable to breathe. She didn't understand that the terrible weight of the water should crush her hollow bones. She pulled herself along with her delicate wings, and ate pinprick creatures that glowed softly, and learned the slow calls of the deep. One day there was a shimmer in the darkness, and she swamflew up and up and up until she burst out into a sky thick with her sisters and brothers. She joined that great murmur, but could never quite fit in their wide dark pattern: her belly full of light, her lungs full of saltwater and sea-song.